The home town of Central Asia's foremost conqueror was the Sogdian twon of Kesh when Chinese Buddhist traveller Xuan Zang passed through in the early seventh century. After the Arab invasion, it assumed the Muslim urban pattern, but fell into semi-dereliction during the Samanid period as Bukhara and Samarkand prospered. The Mongols faced little resistance here in 1220. By 1336, the year of Tamerlane's birth, Kesh and its dependencies were ruled by the Barlas clan, Mongols of the Chaghatai khanate, turkicised by their long sojourn in the fertile Kashakadarya valley. Tamerlane used his Barlas lineage to gather a band of followers with whom he progressed from a sheep-rustler to lord of the valley by the age of 25. A decade of struggle later and he was lord of Transoxiana. While Samarkand was better suited to become the jewel of his empire, Tamerlane paid great effort to strengthen and beautify Kesh. The inner town was surrounded by high walls and a deep moat, crossed by drawbridge. The family cemetery was enlarged and, towering on a scale all its own, Tamerlane's White Palace took shape. Though Tamerlane's dynasty would crumble like the buildings he commissioned, Kesh took from its golden age a new appellation, Shakhrisabz, Green Town, after the spring verdure of its many gardens.

Though Tamerlane built lavish mausoleums for his relatives, in Shakhrisabz he made himself but a simple crypt and, with his last breaths, requested: only a stone, and my name upon it.' Instead he lies beneath Samarkand's sumptuous Gur Emir and giant slab of jade. His wish for simplicity is fulfilled only at his birthplace, Khodja Ilgar village, 13 kilometers (8 miles) south of Shakhrisabz, where a small brick kern quietly marks the entrance of the Terror of the World.

Shakhrisabz celebrated its 2700th anniversary in November 2002

"As a guest in Uzbekistan you will be accorded much respect and shown great hospitality, for local families gladly seize the chance to welcome new friends from abroad"